Connect three 5424 switches with 3 ESX servers and 2 EMC A4-5 iSCSI sans

I have inherited a project from a former employee with only a small amount of information on what he was planning to do. I have three VMware ESX 4.0 servers with two EMC A4-5 iSCSI sans (two servers connected to one san, and one to the other) connected by three Dell 5424 switches. I'm familiar with VMware and can set up the VMs. My problem is configuring the switches for optimal throughput in the shortest time possible as the previous employee was supposed to have this up 6 months ago. Unfortunately, while I understand VLAN concepts, I've never actually configured this type of switch.

So here's the idea:

Only the VMware machines will be hooked into the switches. I would like to have two VLANs; one to connect with our in house network and a second to segment off a backbone network for the iSCSI traffic only on its own subnet. The in house connection would be used only to configure and monitor the switches without having to log in from a PC on the iSCSI subnet.

Can anyone suggest the most optimal way to design this?

Thank you in advance for your help.